Inner and Outer Landscapes

I didn't realize it had been so long since I updated my blog!  We went on a trip from California to Iowa to visit my husband's family in August.  I love to drive cross-country and watch how the landscape changes.  Over the Sierra Nevada mountains into the Nevada desert, across the Rocky Mountains in Utah, the seemingly endless sagebrush in Wyoming, and come into the lush green cornfields of Nebraska and Iowa.  It never ceases to amaze me that it actually rains in the summertime there, since I have lived all my life in California and I'm used to it being bone-dry from May to November.  There was a spectacular storm on the afternoon we arrived; in fact, the clouds were so black and the thunder so ominous that it sent us down to the basement for awhile for fear that a tornado might be brewing.  I posted a few new pictures from the trip in the Photogallery, and also I put up a slideshow with more photos on Associate Content, as well as an article about an interesting place we visited, Effigy Mounds National Monument.  I'm still writing for Bright Hub, mainly in the Diet and Nutrition, Environmental Science and Green Living channels, and  I just got accepted this month to write for the K-12 Education channel, although I've been having some technical difficulties there, and have been unable to post to the discussion board.  Hopefully it will get worked out soon.

I finished my new short story, and I've entered it, along with another story I wrote a while ago, in the September Accentuate Writers Forum contest.  I  feel energized and motivated to write more fiction.  All my life I have let my fear of rejection and my perfectionism hold me back, but I have lately seen cracks in the self-imposed prison walls.  I've been reading a lot of writer's blogs and other writing sites, and I was inspired by the words of Rudy Rucker, an instructor at the 2009 Clarion West Writers Workshop, who wrote in his blog, "Write what you love... Use your whole self.  Don't hold back, don't be embarrassed to write wild."   If I wasn't worried about what people think, then what would happen?  Let's find out.